eSea 18 - Jonny's $10,000 Gamble

Ocean's Seven >Bonus Points >'Tracy's Screen Test' >What’s a Flag State? > She’s Leaving Home >Stonehaven, home of ... >SiberianOnSafety >Recalculating... >

eSeam a r i T i m e / O i l & g a S / w i n d / c r a n e · n O . 1 8 / 2 0 1 4

em aga zine frOm m a erSk Tr a ining

18

Jonny’s $10,000 Gamble

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Brande’s brain factoryAlong with each new generation of turbines comes the need for a new generation of technicians. Siemens build their turbines in Denmark, Germany, Canada, China and the US; it is at Brande that they ‘build’ their technicians. >

'Tracy's Screen Test'The old way of seeking a job is no longer effective! The observations were those of someone who should know, Tracy McGrath has been getting the right people in to the right off-shore jobs for eight years. >

Ocean’s SevenThey had flown the world and now merging from operational regions each side of the southern Atlantic they came together as a team for the first time in the car park of Sonderborg airport. >

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content

She’s leaving HomeOn the return leg of her maiden voyage, Marstal Maersk, the eighth in a series of 20 identical ships, stopped by ‘home’ to give the family the chance to say hello. >

Stonehaven, home of ... Stonehaven harbour has had a 30-year history as a location for training crews of voluntary lifeboats, but ironically bad weather in December 2013 wrecked the old facility. >

SiberianOnSafety Natalia’s route to a job in the new Maersk Training set-up in Houston was a long one, but quite logical. She’s from Tyumen in Western Siberia, the Russian equivalent of Houston, in fact the two are twinned. >

recalculating...‘Why did she say that? She’s wrong!’ Don’t you just love the Sat Nav in the car? It gives the wife somebody else to argue with. . >

career climberJonny Chung had taken the biggest monetary gamble of his life. He’d sold his car for six thousand pounds ($10,000) and had spent just about every penny on two courses in the hope of getting a job in the renewable energy industry. >

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Some magazines are beautifully planned

with the whole year, and beyond, laid out in

terms of themes. We are not one of them, yet

strangely fate seems to sit in on our editorial

meeting and say nothing – it just happens.

In the last eSea we featured a trio of hopefuls

who had put different emphasis and hope into

a new career. One of them sold his car because

he believes working in the wind turbine

industry is the way forward and the money

he raised from the car sale would pay for the

necessary courses.

Jonny Chung was chuffed at the fact that eSea

thought his gamble worthy of an article and

first of all phoned to say thanks and then a

month later to say he’d landed a job and would

be in Denmark to spend the car money on a

couple of blade courses.

The second course takes him to one of the

founding areas of the entire industry, in

Brande in Denmark’s Jutland, home to Bonus

and now the centre of Siemens’ wind turbine

division. By a coincidence a few weeks earlier

we at eSea had already visited the very room

he was to be trained in to write an article

for this issue about the change in training as

the industry blossoms – so a mini red thread

following Jonny’s career also transports us

through this issue.

Getting a career is something we also delve

into with an experienced head hunter telling

us what the marketplace is like and how to

use it to your advantage, if you are an oil and

gas man. The news for them is that they’ve

never had it so good.

On the maritime side we hop in a plane and

fly over the world’s largest ship as she leaves

her home port – well sort of. Like Jonny it is

a follow-on from eSea 17 where we looked at

Marstal, the ferry-tale port that is too small

to host the huge container ship that bears its

name. They sailed out six kilometres to say

hello.

In Brazil they have said goodbye to the World

Cup but as we find out life in Rio can’t yet

return to normal. Welcome back from holiday

and to eSea 18.

editorialRichard [email protected]

Hamburgefintsiv

5Ocean’s Seven

caring administrative assistant’s

moment of thoughtfulness, they

had been routed for the last part

of their journey through the

closest jet capable airport. Or

maybe it was because Sonderborg

and Svendborg are not too

dissimilar. Anyway the Baltic

and a Sunday timetable combined

to have the engineers working

together to get to Svendborg.

greaT fOr a SeagUllThe airport and training centre

are just 50 kilometres apart, if

you are a seagull. There’s a ferry

service to nearby Faaborg but

not at ten on a Sunday evening. It

took a bus, a train, a second bus,

a second train, a taxi and the best

part of four hours before they

checked in at well past two in

the morning. Five days later they

agreed that it had been worth it.

The seven were trail blazers in

many ways beyond transporting

themselves across a large part of

Denmark. They were the first from

the Greek firm Ocean Rig to sign in

at Maersk Training and the first

to take part in a new Engine Room

Resource Management course.

The course, according to Brazilian

engineer Saulo Cardoso, made up

for that transportation hiccup,

even although the kind person

who organised the trip was

trying to get them to go back the

same way because the ticket was

prepaid – so instead of heading

170 kms east to Copenhagen

airport and home they would

head 170 west to catch a plane to

Copenhagen airport.

For Saulo the feeling of flying over

where you want to be is nothing

new. He lives in Recife, three

hours flight away from Rio so

both coming and going he faces

collecting Airmiles he could live

without.

Anyway the disruption was

worth it on this occasion, ‘the

instructors were well prepared,

the facilities excellent and

the equipment and simulators

were just like real life,’ says

Saulo who works on the Ocean

Rig Corcovado which has been

drilling off Greenland and Brazil

since she came into service in

May 2011.

nO demarcaTiOnThe Engine Room Resource

Management course itself is

part of a growing development

in training. Based in Maersk

Training’s MOSAIC (Maersk

Offshore Simulation and

Innovation Centre) simulation

complex, it brings together

technical and non-technical skills

to such an extent it is sometimes

difficult to tell them apart. The

instructors, both the maritime

and peoples skills, share the same

platform and contribute in each

other’s areas, with few lines of

demarcation and towards the end

of the five day course even the

boundaries between student and

teacher seem to have evaporated.

Split in two teams the engineers

not taking part in a physical

scenario become observers in

the control room, noting not just

the mechanical actions but the

reasoning behind each decision.

Part of the training philosophy

is not to drill information into

people, rather it is in letting

the knowledge that is already

implanted through years of

experience, flow freely but maybe

seen in a different context. The

information flow was noticeably

different from day one to day five.

In the beginning it was a lecture,

within days it was a forum.

In the very end they were given a

brief moment to sum up on what

new things they had learnt or had

had awakened in them – within

minutes they had plastered a

notice board with Post-its, none of

which said that Svendborg looks

like Sonderborg. ●

Hamburgefintsiv

Dangling on a rope with nothing between you and the sea, except 70 meters of air and seagulls, you’d think you’d taken enough risks for one day. Working as a technician in the wind turbine industry is all about reducing risks to an absolute minimum; where there is obvious danger it is easier to focus on safety.

Career climber

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career climber

Jonny Chung had taken the

biggest monetary gamble of

his life in wanting to dangle from

a rope day-in day-out. He’d sold

his car for six thousand pounds

($10,000) and had spent just about

every penny on two courses in

the hope of getting a job in the

renewable energy industry –

now in Denmark learning how to

repair blades, he already knew

the gamble had paid off. He had a

new job, a new career, one that he

firmly put down to the 12-week

course at Maersk Training in

Newcastle that introduced him

and a group of job-seekers to wind

turbines.

adrenaline kickThe course-to-job conversion rate

has been exceptional – in fact

Jonny has been offered more than

one since he said yes to Boston

Energy, a management agency

that supplies technicians to big

players like Siemens.

‘It’s amazing,’ says Jonnny, ‘six

months ago I would have driven

past a turbine and not given it

a second thought, now I feel the

adrenaline flowing every time I

see one.’

‘I really can’t believe I’m here,’

he says. He is positively bursting

with excitement in one of the

workshops of the AMU college

outside Ribe where he’s been

learning to paint a blade to within

0.1 to 0.2 of a millimeter. ‘Any

thicker and it cracks and falls off,

any thinner and it’s not working,’

says Timothy Hargreaves, blade

repair instructor to Jonny and ten

others for three weeks.

‘I really can’t believe I’m here,’ he

says again an hour after class.

He’s now 30kms away in the

home of his new industry, Askov.

Here in the Poul la Cour Museum

he is in the Mecca of his industry,

the place where a Danish inventor

took the age-old power of the

wind and got it to constantly glow

in a light bulb.

La Cour generated more than

electricity, he pretty well single-

handedly started the training

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career climber

of young men for what was a

revolutionary new industry,

electricity. It was a parallel not

lost on Jonny as he bounced

around the brick building which

once housed a six-blade turbine

which La Cour built and made

Askov a world first - the first

town to have wind-generated

electricity. The now single story

building is crammed with his

experiments in how best to

harvest power form the wind.

‘It’s just brilliant’ Jonny says over

and over as he snapped photos

of different blade configurations,

‘the boys (on the course) won’t

believe this, it’s amazing.’

Jonny won’t head home to

Newcastle until he’s completed

a level four course at Brande, the

Siemens training centre we visit

elsewhere in this issue of eSea

– life, like wind turbines, goes

round and round. ●

See the videos

8

Hamburgefintsiv

In some companies, employees dream of a bonus, at Siemens training complex in Brande in Denmark, they walk over it daily. Embedded into the floor of their office is the name and logo for one of the pioneers in wind-powered energy, Bonus. It is a reminder of not just its origins, but how far the industry has come in little more than thirty years.

Bonus Points

9

Bonus Points

The building the logo is in, was,

in its past life, a blacksmith’s

smithy and it was from there that

metal was battered into shapes

that would harness the power of

the wind in order to pull water up

and out of the fields. Mechanical

evolution took it the next stage up

and dotted around Denmark and

beyond you can still see turbines

with Bonus on their generator

cabins.

Compared to the latest generation

of turbines, the old Bonus ones

are tiny and what they draw from

the prevailing wind is equally

relatively small – one with a

rotor diameter of 18 metres can

generate up to 100 kilowatts. So

it takes about sixty of them to

match the capacity of just one of

Siemens’ huge 6 MW generators.

If you pass one of the blades being

transported along a motorway

you cannot fail to be humbled by

the size of man’s technological

achievement. For overtaking

drivers each blade of Siemens’

latest .6 turbine is 75 metres

long. These massive ‘sculptures’

in balsa wood and glass fibre

contribute to a spread of 154

metres, that’s a swept area of

18600 sq metres, about two and a

half soccer pitches – and wait for

it, they are only the world’s eighth

biggest!

CARE FOR THE ELDERLYTwo problems arise here which

share a similar solution and that’s

what triggered the visit to Brande

in Denmark’s central Jutland, to

Siemens’ training complex for

their wind turbines. Incidentally

the grounds of the old smithy lie

exactly 50 kilometres due north,

as the wind blows, of Askov, the

village where Poul La Cour made

the breakthrough in thinking and

design which kick started the

whole industry.

Problem number one is that the

older turbines, like everything,

are finding that time is catching

up with them and they, like

the elderly, need that extra

love and attention to keep

going. Even although they are

mostly land-bound the cost

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of repair in relation to output

is disproportionate. Problem

number two is that the new

turbines, although benefiting

from advanced reliability, are

so powerful that any downtime

through a fault is significant – one

day off grid is the same as two

months with an old generator.

Add to that the fact that the

location is almost certainly to be

offshore.

BRANDE’s BRAIN FACTORYSo along with each new

generation of turbines comes

the need for a new generation of

technicians. Siemens build their

turbines at various plants across

Denmark, with some production

in China and the US but it is at

Brande that they ‘build’ their

technicians.

John Andersen and Claus

Ernstsen are responsible for

the technical and safety side

respectively and Ann Meyer

Duedahl is the global head of

training. They view a world of

training which is changing as

dramatically as the technology

they service. Wind has been

used to grind corn for a thousand

years, but as an effective

generator of substantial power,

it’s a relatively new industry

which has reached adulthood

very quickly. In its recent

‘teenage’ years it was prone to

answering the call for trained

staff by taking virtually anyone

who walked in of the street – that

included butchers and bakers

who fancied a career change.

Now all has changed – the job

has become a career and the

benchmark has risen because of

global legislation and the whole

approach of the industry which

is seeing itself as decreasingly

single-company minded. In the

Siemens are a global giant but it is in the small Danish town of Brande that they ‘build’ their technicians.

Bonus Points

12Bonus Points

past a technician was linked to

one company and if they wanted

to move to another had to start

training from scratch. Now they

can take their skills with them,

as Ann pointed out, ‘I see it as

a good thing, the globalisation

and standardisation, will lead to

reduced training costs and create

a higher benchmark within the

industry. In general it is better

for the industry and the aim of

decreasing the cost of electricity –

we have a common goal.’

CHECk IN - CHECk OuTStandardisation does not mean

reducing training to a lower

common denominator. On

the contrary what goes on at

Brande is intensely focused, in

the same way as airlines train

crews for specific aircraft. A

development team of 20 are

constantly reviewing procedures

and techniques for the new and

next generations of turbines and

making sure that the training

matches and sustains them. As

John said ‘It is getting more like

aircraft maintenance – you check

out what you checked in, because

we are talking high voltage here

– if you don’t find that small ring

spanner is left in there . . . .’

The training falls into two zones,

John’s technical and Claus’s

safety, but it was Ann who

assessed them both, ‘In some

ways it is easier on the technical

side since we engineer it, we

create it so we are the best people

to also set the requirements.

Whereas on the safety side a lot

of different people have different

opinions and it is very subjective.’

Yet it is on the safety side in

relation to training that Siemens,

the biggest industrial company

in Europe, believe they have an

edge. In a huge training hanger

‘It is getting more like aircraft maintenance – you check out what you checked in, because we are talking high voltage here – if you don’t find that small ring spanner is left in there . . . .’

13Bonus Points

attached to the administrative

building there are two current

generation current generators.

Apart from being only metres off

the ground and with access to a

coffee machine and toilets, they

are exactly what the technicians

will face out there on the wind

farms. Here they learn how

to do the technical operations

and when it goes wrong for an

individual, how to get them

quickly to secondary medical

care.

The first medical care is

carried out by the technicians

themselves, an innovation which

would have been unthinkable a

short time back, as John put it

‘you see the change in that today’s

technicians realise that advanced

rescue is part of the whole game, a

natural part of their work pattern

and skill list – not like seven, ten

years ago when there were some

cowboys out there.’

Advanced rescue is a key element

when you are looking at a massive

offshore wind farm with around

200 turbines – the turbines are

monitored 24/7 from onshore

facilities and can often be re-set

from there, but if that fails you

need to send out a team. That

team will function to insure that

the turbine is back on grid as soon

as possible, but should a physical

accident occur, that timeline can

be stretched – creating individual

and corporate pain.

NEW HORIZIONsAs Claus said, ‘There’s now a lot

of written legislation on how to

do things properly and safely

but also that the customers’

expectations rise that if we don’t

fulfil a high standard regarding

safety we won’t be allowed on site

and furthermore people won’t

buy our turbines if we don’t have

the right amount of training,

safety and technical knowledge.

Add to this that turbines are

breaking into new environments

which might be harsher so we’ve

developed advanced rescue.’

Those new environments are

opened up by technology. Areas

of the world which previously

were not suitable for wind

turbines now are. The reason is

that the giant turbines, being

taller, now reach into a band of

wind which, with more efficient

blades, represents a return on the

investment. Generally the higher

you go, the windier it is. The wind

farm map of the world is new,

but it is about to be dramatically

taken to a new level. ●

From a distance it is a clear

map of Denmark and from

closer it becomes even clearer

– it is a clear map of how

Denmark embraces wind

power. It’s easy to see why

as a nation it gets 28% of its

electrical power from wind

and with the advancement in

turbine technology understand

why by 2020 the government

target of 50% is a realistic

ambition.

'If we don’t do fulfil a high standard regarding safety we won’t be allowed on site and furthermore people won’t buy our turbines if we don’t have the right amount of training, safety and technical knowledge.'

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The old way of seeking a

job is no longer effective,

particularly in the oil and

gas industry. The market has

changed; the job hunters weapons

are different. The observations

were those of someone who

should know, Tracy McGrath has

been getting the right people in to

the right off-shore jobs for eight

years.

The interview with Glasgow-

based Tracsy was itself riddled

with change. A thousand

kilometres apart, but face-to-face

thanks to Skype, Tracy was well

armed to begin with. She’d clicked

her way through the information

jungle that is the web and already

had an accurate image of her

interviewer’s career. Similarly

he had found out that she was a

highly experience recruiter at

'Tracy's Screen Test''Skype puts drillers in the picture'

15'Tracy's Screen Test'

involved in the placement of on

and offshore specialists. It didn’t

say she was just days away from

maternity leave, but did say she’d

been with employment companies

Cirrus and Office Services before

joining Xltec Recruitment in 2013.

‘I’ve been in this for about eight

years and it has changed since

I started. Everything is very

much computerised you very

rarely go through the agencies

for available jobs, everything

is now networking, things like

LinkedIn and word of mouth. We

tend not to do advertising on job

bases, especially with the Oil &

Gas market, it is very much on

recommendations,’ she says.

The role of a senior consultant

in the recruitment industry has

changed from filtering applicants

CV’s to being like a soccer

manager, building teams by

searching out and finding the best

players and then keeping an eye

on their contracts and career.

in driVer’S SeaT‘It is very competitive from my

point of view, there are a lot of

agencies out there and the market

is very candidate driven, so we

keep a close watch on people

when they sign a contract we

log how long it is for and when

the candidate becomes available

again so you can phone them as

soon as they get back onshore,’

she explained.

The whole process has become

more personal, about building-up

relationships with each person

because, as Tracy said, the ball

is very much in the court of the

employee. But there are traps.

Tracy lists certification and

experience as the kingpins in

any application but a curriculum

vitae, a CV, is a delicate plant

which can be poisonous. Tracy

recommends some simple rules,

like a plant it needs constant care,

but the art is to prune without

losing anything.

‘Gaps are a problem because they

create questions, but overall rule

number 1 is to be truthful. We,

as do the big drilling companies,

keep records, so if someone

changes their background we’ll

notice. The big thing is people

missing things out of their CV,

changing dates, maybe they were

on a rig for a couple of months and

didn’t like it so they just took if off

their CV – so the big thing for us

is always tell the truth because it

will come back and haunt you.’

‘Then the clients are different,

Someone like Maersk who have

a fantastic interview process, it

is very structured, very process

driven and then we have other

clients where a look at the CV,

a simple phone call and you are

straight out on the rig. So clients

vary, it is juggling them with

candidates. Getting the clients

expectations and then marrying

both parties together,’ says Tracy.

Knowing your target company

is another skill because Tracy

spends much of her time ‘tuning’

CV’s to fit the company needs. But

the good news from Tracy is that

much of the targeting is currently

been done by the companies.

Roughnecks have never had it so

smooth. ●

'Everything is very much computerised you very rarely go through the agencies for available jobs, everything is now networking, things like LinkedIn and word of mouth. We tend not to do advertising on job bases, especially with the Oil & Gas market, it is very much on recommendations’

'Overall rule number 1 is to be truthful. We, as do the big drilling companies, keep records, so if someone changes their background we’ll notice.

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a rather pleasantly

understated document, if

it weren’t for the date on it you

might find difficulty putting it into

a particular time spot. It looks like

something from the fifties, but at

Maersk Training in Rio de Janeiro

the document from the Marshall

Islands is a prized and very

valuable piece of paper. It is their

first accreditation for training

from an internationally respected

and recognised flag state.

Geographically the Marshall

Islands are a scattering of tiny

dots in the equatorial Pacific.

They’ve been owned by the

Germans and the Japanese, been

adopted by the Americans and

now belong to no more than

70,000 local Marshallese. They do

however pack a mighty punch in

shipping. With over 3,000 vessels

registered there they are the

third most vibrant flag state.

Although remote from Brazil the

Marshall Islands accreditation

is important since 24 out of the

26 drill ships being hired by the

Brazilian petroleum company,

Petrobras, are registered there.

It’s a very small piece of paper, but

a deeply significant one. ●

what’s a flag State?

Hamburgefintsiv

She’s leaving HomeAt every level the docking of Marstal Maersk in her home port is impossible. She’s twice as wide as the harbour entrance, she needs metres more depth of water to float and if even she did get in, at almost 400 metres in length and about 60 higher than the sea, she would dwarf all around her.

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She’s leaving Home

On the return leg of her maiden

voyage, Marstal Maersk, the

eighth in a series of 20 identical

ships which are the largest in

the world, stopped by ‘home’ to

give the family the chance to say

hello. Her size meant she had to

stay outside the front door, about

six kilometres outside. The family

in the form of much of Marstal’s

population, hopped on board a

flotilla of small craft and a coaster

to see her in glorious close up and

clamber on board.

The people of Marstal are rightly

proud of hosting the giant

Triple-E, the class name given to

the Maersk Line vessels, but what

does it mean to be a home port.

How can you call it home if you

never live there?

nO Place like HOmeIn the old days, when towns by

the sea were also usually a port, a

source of entry and exit for people

and goods and also a source

of crewing, there was a direct

connection between home for

the sailor and the ship. Alongside

home port there is also port of

registry - these can be the same

but often for different reasons

they are different. So what is a

home port as opposed to a port

of registration and what is the

difference between flag state and

flag of convenience?

For a non-seafarer the concept

can be a little confusing,

particularly if you see Moldova

on the stern. Alongside Moldova

you can have Mongolia, Bolivia,

amongst others, that are listed as

flags of convenience, states which

have no connection with or to the

sea. There is a major difference

between Flagged State and Flag of

Convenience.

Not all vessels are registered to

their ship owners’ country of

origin. The country under whose

registration such vessels operate

is referred to as a flag state and

these states adhere to a varying

degree to globally agreed laws

and standards such as SOLAS

and MARPOL and following ILO

and IMO guidelines. Whereas

the practice of registering under

a flag of convenience allows the

ships owners to operate with

reduced costs and avoid certain

regulations. Flags of convenience

have often been criticized and in

2009 thirteen of the nations were

outlined as having substandard

regulations.

nO HOme like POrTHome port used to refer to

just that, the port to which

the vessel might return to and

from it draw manpower and

substance. Today it is much more

of a complimentary term and the

connection is not, as in the case

of Marstal, a physically practical

one. A port of registration is a

more legal entity – form here tax

and legal aspects predominate.

The stern of the Titanic had

Liverpool on it, even although it

was never scheduled to call there. ●

18

Hamburgefintsiv

Stonehaven, home of ...

19


Stonehaven, the pretty former

fishing port just south of

Aberdeen which was a favoured

holiday spot for Mary, Queen of

Scots and Robert Burns is famous,

or nearly famous, for two things.

The home of the deep-fried Mars

bar, it was also the birthplace

of Robert William Thomson,

inventor of the fountain pen and

the pneumatic tyre. It’s soon to be

famous again as a centre for fast

rescue training.

The harbour has had a 30-year

history as a location for training

crews of voluntary lifeboats,

but ironically bad weather in

December 2013 wrecked the

old facility run by the Maritime

Rescue Institute. It seemed like

the end. Now Maersk Training in

Aberdeen and the Survival Craft

Inspectorate have come together

to establish the Maritime

Training Academy in the port.

20


With their OPITO certification

Maersk Training will supply the

training instructors for courses

like Fast Rescue Craft Boatman,

Fast Rescue Craft Coxswain,

Daughter Craft Coxswain, Twin

Fall Lifeboat Coxswain and

training associated medical

courses ITSO and AMA, alongside

technical training. They’ve

also supplied the two new fast

rescue crafts. The courses and

boats are housed in new facilities

which with the backing of

Stonehaven Harbour Board and

Aberdeenshire Council are right

in the centre of the port. ●

21

Hamburgefintsiv

SiberianOnSafety

Although a young woman in a man’s world, Natalia Lykova loves it when she steps into the training arena and sees a mature male face or two amongst her ‘audience’ of drillers. Spreading the health, safety and environment message is sometimes easier she says when an old voice can say to the young guys “now you listen, I’m a lost cause, but you can benefit from this.”

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SiberianOnSafety

natalia’s route to a job in the

new Maersk Training set-

up in Houston was a long one, but

quite logical. She’s from Tyumen

in Western Siberia, the Russian

equivalent of Houston, in fact the

two are twinned. It is something

which helps her when conducting

courses, not the twin factor but

the differences.

‘If you have the plastic suits on

top of your normal overall, it

is a very tough call for them in

temperatures out there in the

Gulf of 40-45 degrees. They say

they’ll be dehydrated and get heat

stroke. But there are other ways

to manage that. Where I come

from it is also the temperature

that gets to you, forty, but a minus.

We chat about the difficulties of

working in extremes, that’s how

we break the ice, literally,’ says

Natalia.

Although just 28, Natalia has

already been on just about every

Maersk Drilling rig along with

most of the rigs in the Gulf of

Mexico, her goal to spread the

word about health, safety and

environmental issues, but it is a

man’s world out there, so how do

hardened drillers and roughnecks

react to an attractive young

woman telling them to look after

themselves?

‘Being a young woman you treat

it as your weakness or you can

treat it as your strength. In the

beginning with all new people,

you face a barrier, but with

humour you can connect. I don’t

like talking up front, I want them

to get involved in a discussion,’

she says. ‘You need to be resilient

yourself, it is a never ending

challenge. You have to understand

them very fast or you lose them

very fast.’

HSE training is sometimes

carried out onshore in classroom

situations but Natalia says doing

it on board has its pluses and

minuses. ‘Training on site has

the added complication that

some of the guys are coming to

you directly form a 12 hour shift

and can be very tired. But on the

plus side is the fact that they are

surrounded by work, for instance

you can see a guy sitting in a

dirty coverall, covered in mud

they’ve stopped working, but

the chemical is on their skin and

hasn’t stopped working. We can

talk about it there and then.’

winning warriOrNatalia’s desire to train hasn’t

stopped since her first ‘real’

job with Maersk Drilling – ‘I

witnessed there that training

does make the difference. There’s

a saying in my country that “one

warrior in a field does not make

an army,” that’s why we engage

with a lot of people on board,

HSE coordinators and then their

leaders ashore.’

But when it all comes down to

it, Natalia says only one person

matters. ‘I love that sticker on

the mirror which says “this

is the person responsible for

your health today.” Only that

person can put the PPE on them

– I’m trying to reach out to their

common sense and I think that

all of them realise that there is a

family back home and that they

want to come back to them safe.’ ●

Houston aberdeen Tyumen

Population 2,160,821 220,240 679,861

Highest temperature +43c +29.8c +38c

lowest temperature -15c -19.3c -50c

Twinned with Aberdeen/Tyumen Houston Houston

most famous person? Howard Hughes Annie Lennox Irving Berlin

23

24Poopdeck 18

‘Why did she say that? She’s

wrong!’

Don’t you just love the Sat Nav

in the car? It gives the wife

somebody else to argue with.

As a self-confessed gadget freak

I admit to GPS addiction, it now

seems un-natural to drive without

it, a bit like seat belts, but I’m

getting worried the dependence

will have its side effects. The other

day I found myself parked in a

foreign town and automatically

disconnected the Garmin to help

me walk to a shop. Gone was the

ability to observe and inquire, I

was a brain-dead drone controlled

by a robot.

I somehow think that life is a

little shallower with this bit of

technology, as Albert Einstein

once said ‘I fear the day that

technology will surpass our

human interaction. The world

will have a generation of idiots.’

He died in 1955 when the height

of technology was a KitchenAid.

That day’s arrived. Clever man.

Another clever man put Einstein’s

belief to the test a few years ago

by putting four people into a

driving simulator. Two of them

had GPS, two had a thing called

a map. They all made it to the

destination, but on reflection

the two using the map were

able to recognise landmarks and

observed and remembered other

recalculating...

25Poopdeck 18

interesting features, the two with

GPS failed to notice they passed

the same building twice.

What triggered this was the

despatching of a party of

engineers to Sonderborg in error.

(see story page 4) Perhaps the

person who booked the tickets

had clicked on a website which

showed a photo of a Jumbo jet

nestled between a raised loading

platform – a 747 needs at least

another 1300 metres to take off.

Maybe it was the same person

who obeyed the GPS on a family

holiday from Sweden. Intended

target was the famous Blue

Grotto in Naples only to end up

900 kilometres away at the Blue

Grotto Industrial Estate in the Po

Valley. Worrying.

The greater worry is that the

GPS is eroding our grey matter.

Centuries ago a troubadour could

come to a village, sing a song

embedded with gossip, news and

practical information and then

leave. Everyone present could

then sing the song, enriched by

knowing more than they did

earlier. Those songs altered and

deformed survived to form the

base of many fairytales. Pirates

rarely if ever wrote anything

down, they couldn’t. A crude

map and some oral clues were

the secret to hidden treasure,

one reason why much remains

hidden, or more correctly lost.

Dislike or love them, London

cabbies have been found to have

considerably bigger posterior

hippocampal region of the brain,

that is grey matter. This is in

order for them to store and call

upon every twist and turn in the

capital in order to get you there in

the quickest and shortest route.

Personally I think it is to allow

them to harangue you with some

culturally inappropriate story on

how they see the world being run.

So if practice causes the brain

to grow, what will happen with

gradual and then total reliance

on technology. How far are we

away from someone cancelling a

dinner appointment, not because

the baby-sitter didn’t turn up,

but because the TomTom won’t

reboot?

alBerT 165, walTer 197So if the mind is a car park which

changes shape dependent on

usage, is there a benefit? There’s

a CBS TV series to be aired in the

Fall as they say in the US, which

is ‘built around’ another clever

man. At 13 he had Swat troops

surrounding his remote home

in the west of Ireland. Under his

username Scorpion he’d hacked

into the most protected files

in the NASA computer system.

Now 39 he was given the same

‘extraordinary ability’ visa status

as Einstein. Einstein had an IQ of

165. Walter O’Brien’s is 197, the

fourth highest ever measured.

Today he lives in the US as

the head of the international

security specialist firm, Scorpion

Computer Services, employing

over 2,000 geniuses worldwide

and turns over $1 billion – the

series is based on true events,

including how his thinking

opened the way to finding the

Boston bombers, but I’ll watch for

one tell-tale moment. Will he have

a GPS in his car? If not, mine’s

going out the window. A case of

recalculating. ●

26eSea library To go back in time and access articles from

previous issues, simply click on the photo of the edition.

The numbers in front of the articles is the eSea issue.

For direct access click on the article title

eSea 1 Instructors’ back to sea programme - Sea Time Reduction announced - Vetting for Supply - New Deepwater Horizons open up

eSea 2New Towmasters’ course gets full simulation treatment - Deepwater course piloted - Wind industry - Drill instructor gets back to the well head

eSea 3MOSAIC II announced - Offshore wind, the new challenges - West African pilots use simulator to deal with the ‘big boys’ - CraneSIM in Vietnam - Piracy through the ages

eSea 4MT launches new website - Chinese in big safety push - Rig crane put in a box - Safety and People Skills build platform emergency course - how to communicate across cultures

eSea 5Maersk Training pennant raised in Dubai - Platform crews pilot Emergency Response course - How to be best in Vetting class - Danger of computer over reliance

eSea 6MOSAIC II, the ground is broken - Rig participants up to elbows in some very special mud - Semi-sub crew learns anchor handling - West African pilots start payback

eSea 7Chinese Container crews look to safety - Rig crane simulator tested - Esbjerg’s new facilities - MOSAIC II update - DP sea-time reduction - Coffee Break with Bent Nielsen

eSea 8Titanic Edition looking back at 100 years of increased safety and improved training - the lifeboat revolution - man overboard - spreading knowledge - tomorrow’s seafarers

eLibrary

eSea 9$15million Phone call - Wrappers off MOSAIC II - 5 Year drilling package - Tomorrow’s leaders today - Family comes too - Learning in luxury - Danish Olympians teambuild

eSea 10Breaking the ice, a new route in navigation - crane simulation arrives - Newcastle’s drop in course for the high life - the silent disease, loneliness - Chinese catch safety bug

To go back in time and access articles from previous issues, simply click on the photo of the edition or use the QR code.









eLibrary












eLibrary












eLibrary












eLibrary












eLibrary












eLibrary












eLibrary




eSeaM A R I T I M E /O I L & G A S/ W I N D/C R A N E · JA N UA RY 2013

macondo – a lesson unlearnt? the worlds most advanced offshore simulation complex >�

the most socially isolated person on planet earth? >

training to avoid skyfall >

captaining a floating town >

combating stress with underwater rugby >

11

EM AGA ZINE FROM M A ERSK TR A INING









eLibrary












eLibrary




eSea 1

eSea 10

eSea 9

eSea 12

eSea 13

eSea 14

eSea 15

eSea 16

eSea 17

eSea 11

eSea 8

eSea 7

eSea 6

eSea 5

eSea 4

eSea 3

eSea 2

mariTime1 DP Sea Time Reduction 1 Vetting for supply 2 Towmaster course 3 West African pilots’ eye-opener 6 West Africans payback time 10 Ice breaking through world short-cut 11 Captaining a hotel 12 Bridge and engine room in sync 12 A new look at mooring 14 What MLC 2006 means 15 All Fired Up – a very real computer game 16

Ngoc’s Fourth Bar 16 838 Days – Søren’s days in pirate captivity

O&g5 Rig crew responds to an emergency 6 Semi-sub crew handling anchors 6 Mud course 9 The $15million phone call 11 Macondo – a lesson unlearnt? 12 North Sea, experts look to bright future 14 Brazil’s oil and gender revolution 15 Gulf Lessons – performance enhancement 15 What is Performance Enhancement?

wind POwer3 Wind industry – new challenges 12 The father of wind power 12 A2Sea’s new windcarrier 12 Olsen team get specific training 13 Training at heights for lady with no vertigo 14 Blade Runners, the new high level repairmen 17 Carload of Hopes: the heights some people will

go to for a job

crane3 CraneSim in Vietnam 4 Rig crane in a box 7 Rig crane simulator tested 13 APMT’s management improvement programme 15 Slinging in the sunshine

SafeTY4 Container industry in big safety push 7 Chinese container crews show huge progress

miScellaneOUS3 Piracy through the ages 8 Titanic edition looks at progress since 1912 9 Turning a course into a family holiday 10 Loneliness, the problem of isolation 11 Underwater rugby, combating stress 13 The global social media revolution 13 Piracy and the cross - the roll today of the

seamen’s mission 14 The Story of Ngoc – a remarkable tale of

resilience and good fortune 14 Eat meet and leave – the messages in our diet 15 Puffed – Hawaii’s Ironmen 15 Michael Bang - From defusing to enlightening 15 The story of the world beating blue boat 16 Colony of Hope, meeting India’s stigmatised

community 17 Marstal – port of passion and ferry tales

eSeaM A R I T I M E / O I L & G A S / W I N D / C R A N E · N O . 1 2 / 2 0 1 3

wind powerWindmills - never ending or beginning >�Poul la Cour. Father of Wind Power >Olsen band crack safe operation >The Floating Table >Bridge and Engine in Sync >Door Knobs to Safety >The North Sea Glory Story > 12


eSeaM A R I T I M E / O I L & G A S / W I N D / C R A N E · N O . 14 / 2 0 1 3

food


Don’t blame the cook >Eat meet and leave >

Triple E = 3M’s >Brazil’s oil and gender revolution >Funny Tummy

So what is the MLC 2006 all about? >Food for Thought >Blade Runners >

Playing the name game >

The Story of Ngoc



15

Gulf Lessons >Keep taking the tablets > What exactly is Performance Enhancement? >When BP means Better Prepared > Nintendo boys, game on >Puffed, but the magic drags on >No bang Bang >Girls Out Loud >Every Boat Tells a Story >Science - stronger than steel >All fired up >Space, the final frontier >

performance enhancement

Piracy – Søren’s Somali Story

Ngoc's Fourth Bar >Colony of hope >

Farewell Favela, So Long Shanty >Starbuster >

All Sorts Have One Aim >Knowledge Seekers >

Helsingborg to Prague, via Svendborg >Surely not >



16

Carload of Hopes >Revolving door >

Caught Flagging >Logomotions >

Hard Drive for Soft Skills >Perfect Pressure Performance >

Marstal - port of passion and ferry tales >Rockall - All Rock or Oil Rock? >

eSeaM A R I T I M E / O I L & G A S / W I N D / C R A N E · N O . 17/ 2 0 1 4


17

The Great Bag of China- what's the secret of good branding?

Hamburgefintsiv 27

contacteditorial issues and suggestions:Richard Lightbody - [email protected]

names and emails of those able and eager to help with specific enquiries arising out of this issue

Sales enquiries aberdeen (Uk): [email protected]

Sales enquiries Brazil:[email protected]

Sales enquiries esbjerg (dk): [email protected]

Sales enquiries india:[email protected]

Sales enquiries middle east:[email protected]

Sales enquiries newcastle (Uk):[email protected]

Sales enquiries norway: [email protected]

Sales enquiries Svendborg (dk):[email protected]

Or visit our website www.maersktraining.com

Documents

eSea 18 - Jonny's $10,000 Gamble